I've read Perdido Street Station and The Scar which I thought were amazing and wonderfully written. I was less impressed with King Rat. Too many other books to read before I get to his later works but I'm more likely to read them than anything by Mr Priest now, given that he comes across as the worst kind of snob in his article with his comments about Mark Billingham (none of whose books I've actually read either). Shame, cos The Prestige is a marvellous film and I'd promised myself I'd read the original novel at some point.
Ah well...

Denying yourself the chance to enjoy a writer's work because of one angry blog post seems a bit pointless to me. I think you should judge each book on its own merit, not on whether you happen to agree or disagree with the author's personal views. I mean - imagine if you'd come across a similar rant from Mieville in the past and missed out on Perdido Street Station and The Scar as a result. What would be the point of that?

I have (sadly) only read two Priest novels so far - The Prestigeand The Extremes, and I'd rate them as both amongst the very best novels I've ever read, SF or otherwise. As far as I'm concerned the guy can slag off who he likes - including authors I happen to like - if he writes books as good as this I'll still buy them.

Nobody, except me, a few days ago - and possibly Christopher Priest himself – have appreciated that his dawn raid against the Clarke Award is a version of the Sculthorpe Earth Cry from the Islands: self-referentially linked by me here: http://weirdmonger.blogspot.co.uk/2012/ ... h-cry.html

The Earth Cry effectively features in one of the sixty longlisted novels that was not even read. Unread, inferentially, you see, as they got its title wrong on all the public lists.

I've read both The Separation and The Prestige, both by Priest, and I thought they were outstanding novels.
I haven't read anything on the Clarke awards list because generally SF doesn't do it for me. But maybe that's Priest's point - his stuff is about pushing the boundaries whereas the nominated titles don't (I'm not sure myself whether they do or don't).
As a horror fan I'd be disappointed if the nominated titles were all works that fitted with the stereotype (ie Twilight, or paranormal romance titles, or Attack of the Crabs 18, etc. By the way I'm not saying that any of the Clarke nominees are poor books (or, indeed, poorly written).

I think that's a possibility, but also we need to bear in mind the context of any reading - you'll come to "Embassytown" with different expectations from Bob, who's read his previous books. And what might be characterised as laziness could be the exact opposite - an attempt by the author to write outside of his comfort zone.

Very true. The main context I'll be coming to it with is as a book recommended by my boss (I love having a boss who loves sci-fi, especially when as an English teacher she could so easily be another 'Austen and Shakespeare only' type - there are more than a few...) but undeniably my reading will now be more than a little shaded by all of this hoo-har. Another friend was put off by a giant chicken (?!!) but I don't think that's in Embassytown.

I think that if any failings are due to breaking out of a comfort zone, then as far as failings go it would be a good one to have. So much better than writing the same book over and over , as some do.

All of this has certainly spurred me on to read it though, and that can't be a bad thing.

Denying yourself the chance to enjoy a writer's work because of one angry blog post seems a bit pointless to me. I think you should judge each book on its own merit, not on whether you happen to agree or disagree with the author's personal views..

Definitely. If I did that, I wouldn't read Ellroy and then I'd have missed L.A. Confidential and The Black Dahlia, both of which I thoroughly enjoyed.

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